by Ethan Kross
aren’t simply habits or routines: Hobson et al., “Psychology of Rituals.”
Australian Olympic swimmer Stephanie Rice: Gary Morley, “Rice’s Rituals: The Golden Girl of Australian Swimming,” CNN, June 28, 2012, www.cnn.com/2012/06/28/sport/olympics-2012-stephanie-rice-australia/index.html.
ritualized cleaning behaviors: Lang et al., “Effects of Anxiety on Spontaneous Ritualized Behavior.”
socially rejected by their peers: Rachel E. Watson-Jones, Harvey Whitehouse, and Cristine H. Legare, “In-Group Ostracism Increases High-Fidelity Imitation in Early Childhood,” Psychological Science 27 (2016): 34–42.
desired goals: E. Tory Higgins, “Self-Discrepancy: A Theory Relating Self and Affect,” Psychological Review 94 (1987): 319–340; and Charles S. Carver and Michael F. Scheier, “Control Theory: A Useful Conceptual Framework for Personality-Social, Clinical, and Health Psychology,” Psychological Bulletin 92 (1982): 111–135. Also see Earl K. Miller and Jonathan D. Cohen, “An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 24 (2001): 167–202.
karaoke study: Brooks et al., “Don’t Stop Believing.”
Conclusion
our species didn’t evolve: This is not to say that meditation and mindfulness aren’t useful. Like the other techniques reviewed in this chapter, they are tools that are useful in some contexts. The broader point is that it is not useful (or feasible) to continually focus on the present, because succeeding often requires us to reflect on the future and past.
useful in small doses: Dacher Keltner and James J. Gross, “Functional Accounts of Emotions,” Cognition and Emotion 13 (1999): 467–480; and Randolph M. Nesse, “Evolutionary Explanations of Emotions,” Human Nature 1 (1989): 261–289.
impossible for them to feel pain: U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain,” National Institutes of Health, Dec. 10, 2019, ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/congenital-insensitivity-to-pain#genes.
into a curriculum: The curriculum for this project focuses broadly on teaching students how to control their emotions using several of the strategies reviewed in Chatter, along with other empirically supported tools.
the pilot study: This study took place during the winter of 2019 in a high school in the northeastern United States. Students were randomly assigned to the toolbox curriculum or a “control” curriculum that taught students about the science of learning. The curricula were co-created by scientists (Angela Duckworth, Daniel Willingham, John Jonides, Ariana Orvell, Benjamin Katz, and myself) and teachers (Rhiannon Killian and Keith Desrosiers).
different situations: For a discussion of the importance of flexibly using different emotion-management strategies, see Cecilia Cheng, “Cognitive and Motivational Processes Underlying Coping Flexibility: A Dual-Process Model,” Journal of Personal and Social Psychology 84 (2003): 425–438; and George A. Bonanno and Charles L. Burton, “Regulatory Flexibility: An Individual Differences Perspective on Coping and Emotion Regulation,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 8 (2013): 591–612.
when used interchangeably: James J. Gross, “Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Future Prospects,” Psychological Inquiry 26 (2015): 1–26; Ethan Kross, “Emotion Regulation Growth Points: Three More to Consider,” Psychological Inquiry 26 (2015): 69–71.
About the Author
Ethan Kross, PhD, is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. An award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and Ross School of Business, he is the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory. He has participated in policy discussion at the White House and has been interviewed about his work on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, and NPR Morning Edition. His pioneering research has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. He completed his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD at Columbia University. This is his first book.
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